


Or Else I Shall Be Lost

by tessiete



Series: The Eternal Spring [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: A vague sequel to Eternal Spring but you don't need to read that really, Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Korkie is a Kenobi, Padme Lives, Post-Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, This will prove my point, fight me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:06:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25771810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tessiete/pseuds/tessiete
Summary: Korkie Kryze left Tatooine with nothing but his father's blessing, a disgruntled ex-clone trooper, and an old lightsaber.He means to join the Rebellion. He means to honor his father's legacy. He means to remember the Jedi. He means to fight.But before they even get to Alderaan, he and Boil are captured by a legion of the 501st, and Darth Vader is intrigued by this boy with a Jedi's weapon, and a very familiar attitude. Apparently the sass is hereditary.And he wants to make it clear just who is the favorite son.
Relationships: Darth Vader & Korkie Kryze, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Korkie Kryze
Series: The Eternal Spring [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1869592
Comments: 27
Kudos: 206





	Or Else I Shall Be Lost

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pomiar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pomiar/gifts), [acatbyanyothername](https://archiveofourown.org/users/acatbyanyothername/gifts), [PIRANHA](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PIRANHA/gifts).



> Look, Korkie Kryze is a Kenobi. It might as well be canon.
> 
> But here's the thing - I know we got some doubters out there. So this is my gift - my persuasive, perhaps unasked for and unwanted gift - to you Debbie Doubters.
> 
> It's meant to be fun. And anyway, stan Korkie. I love you all.
> 
> Please, let me go back to writing One Human Thought. I miss Qui-Gon. His children are running wild.

_Speak, father, speak to your little boy,_   
_Or else, I shall be lost._

_\- William Blake_

* * *

By the time he remembers the hilt tucked into the bottom of his rucksack, it’s already too late. They’ve been brought to the bridge to stand before the captain of this vessel - a rogue clone, and a boy with a Jedi blade being of particular interest in these troubled times.

“What’s this?” the officer inquires. His voice is smooth, and carries the cadence of some core world military academy. He has been trained to command men, to answer to a general, and to ask no questions of his superiors. He regards Korkie with a piqued brow, and a skeptical eye.

Korkie graduated from an academy just like that, and he’s not intimidated. Truth be told, he’s rather affronted at the lack of decency on display.

“That’s none of your business,” Korkie retorts, only to receive a sharp kick to the shin for his lip.

Beside him, Boil grunts, likewise bound by his wrists, and a guard at his back. Despite the dire straits they’re in, Korkie is nearly thankful that Boil has been thus incapacitated, sure that under other circumstances his tongue would have earned him more than a single, wild kick. 

“Shut it,” the clone grumbles.

“They went through my pack,” Korkie gripes. “I’ve got my underthings in there!”

The vehement indignation pushes his tone from the secret confines of a whisper to a complaint voiced publicly enough that the captain’s mouth twists in disgust.

“Believe me, young sir, I have no desire to root through your smallclothes.”

“Well, _somebody_ does,” he mutters.

“You know, in cases such as this,” the officer says, “I’d normally have my men execute you on the spot. Occasionally, if my captives proved _particularly_ troublesome - or procacious - I’d have your vessel stripped of its hyperdrive, and left to drift.”

Korkie grinds his teeth, his jaw aching to speak but some bare sense of self-preservation urging silence. Boil curses fluently under his breath.

“But alas, in this instance, the decision is not up to me.” At this, the captain smiles wickedly, and hands the saber hilt to a junior officer next to him. He’s young, and eager, and yet Korkie can see him swallow back his fear as the weight of the blade falls into his hand. “Lord Vader has requested your presence in his quarters. And I’m sure you’ll find his company rather more formidable than mine.”

“I’m sure I’d quite soil myself with fear,” Korkie says. “If only I had smallclothes to spare.”

The captain’s superior smirk drops, his outrage taking hold of his mouth and turning the corners down.

“Take them away,” he barks.

And as they’re manhandled out the exit with rather less dignity than is his due by either birth or temperament, Korkie can’t help the smile that spreads across his face. They may be marching to their doom, but there is some grim comfort in the familiarity of captivity, and the pursuit of an unlikely escape.

“What’re you so happy about, Kiorcicek?” Boil demands.

“I feel like we’re getting good at this,” he replies, and the clone goes back to cursing.

* * *

He’s less amused to discover their Imperial hosts have no intention of detaining them together. 

“Leave the boy here, and send the clone down to medical to be decommissioned.”

“No!” Korkie twists and spits as he’s shoved towards a small cell, bracing his legs against the frame and kicking back against the grip of the trooper behind him. He throws the man for a second, but the masked soldier has the upper hand in both height and strength and recovers fast. He pulls Korkie’s arms sharply, dragging them up against his back until he feels his shoulders spark with pain, and his elbows hyperextend. “ _Day'duumiri ni, gar etyc aruetii!”_ he shouts, even as he relents beneath the pressure. “Boil! _Boil, ner vod! Nu'duumir ibic!”_

“ _K’oyacyi, gar nurmanyc adiik,”_ Boil barks. His voice carries back down the hall, his head twisted to call out to Korkie as the boy is forced inside the chamber. 

The guard undoes the restraints, and Korkie breaks free, savagely turning on his escort like a wild _strill._ His hands claw at plastoid armour, scrambling for a hold, but finding none. With a final sharp thrust the guard throws him off, and he stumbles backward into the cell, falling, catching himself on his wrists. Faster than thought, he’s got his feet beneath him, leaping upright, but it is too late - the pneumatics release, and thick plates of durasteel leap forth from the floor and down from the lintel, slamming together with a malicious hiss of pleasure at Korkie’s definitive amputation from the fight.

He resists the urge to beat at the door, but gives into screaming out his fury. No one comes. His breath returns to him eventually, the heat of his ire dying out as minutes go by. Then hours. He waits. He thinks that maybe he’s been forgotten. He thinks of Boil, then tries not to, knowing that he must be calm, and focused when his chance comes. And it will come. He sits back on his heels, and counts his breaths. He closes his eyes, and in his mind, rising up from the muted reds and yellows of his own flesh and blood, he sees the Dune Sea of Tatooine. He sees wave after wave of sand rolling over the horizon, eagerly lapping at the twin suns which rise from its depths. He sees a white hut. He sees a green garden. He sees the blue of his father’s eyes. The blue of his blade. The blue of the desert sky at night, of the grass on Stewjon, of the seas of Mandalore before the Excision. He reaches for these things, and finds his peace.

He exhales.

The door slides open like a great iron jaw, sibilant and mocking, and through it proceeds it’s forked tongue: a figure clad all in black, a rounded bucket upon its head, and wide, vacant eyes. Korkie has seen this creature before, but then, he’d been fueled by desperation. He’d been preoccupied by a violent need, a wild hope. He hadn’t been cornered like some pathetic creature crushed into the corner of a vicious cage.

He presses against the wall, the steel cold and rigid at his back. The door closes, the noise of the corridor beyond is smothered, and he is alone with the beast.

The Sith raises his hand, and Korkie flinches before any blow has been struck, already fearful and wary of hurt. But no hit lands. He opens his eyes again, curious as to whether the being is a wraith, or something his imagination may have summoned into being. But no - the cloaked figure still stands there, hand outstretched, and in his palm lies the hilt from Korkie’s rucksack.

“Where did you get this blade?” the Sith asks, his voice deep and modulated by some black mechanics riding smoothly over the heaving inhalations of fabricated lungs.

Korkie licks his lips. “Who are you?” he asks.

“I am Lord Vader,” the Sith says. “And you begin to try my patience. How did you get this saber?”

He hesitates. The Lord of the Sith, the Emperor’s right hand, and closed fist has rendered him mute, but not thoughtless. There are secrets in the blade which he will not share.

“Why does it matter?” he replies.

“This is a Jedi’s weapon,” Vader says. “And yet, you are no Jedi. A Jedi would not be so easily parted from his blade. It is his life.”

“Well, perhaps I stole it from a Jedi,” Korkie suggests. “Perhaps, I killed a Jedi and took it from him.”

Clumsy fingers beneath sleek synth leather gloves close over the hilt, the silver of it glinting merrily in the grasp of a cold fist.

“Impossible,” Lord Vader says. “I am growing tired of your games, boy. I shall only ask once more: who gave it to you?”

“I cannot say,” he replies.

“Cannot?” says Vader. “Or will not?”

“I will not.” His voice is firm, and does not shake. He reaches again for that serenity: a flash of copper hair, of soft robes, of blue eyes. He hears a shout. The oceans in his mind turn to flame. He smells burnt flesh, and hears a scream of hatred, and a wretched cry of love. He gasps, for these are not his memories, the peace of his conjured happiness wrenched from his head as the Sith bears down upon his mind. He thinks of his father, reaching madly for the comfort of his quiet smile, the dry warmth of his hand as he rests his palm over Korkie’s, handing him the blade; of the green ray it sheathes; of the _muja_ pit; of sand, of Tatooine, of -

He wrenches himself free with an audible cry, throwing himself backward, his head slamming against the wall and bucking the Sith from his consciousness. For a moment, he lies there dazed, slumped over his chest, his arms wrapped around his middle as though they’re all that keeps his ribs and lungs and heart from spinning out into oblivion with his mind. But then, his thoughts settle, his awareness coming back to him, watching as the Sith looms close unaffected by his pain.

“I know you,” the creature says, and Korkie can only stare in terrible wonder. “You’re the boy from Sundari. You broke free of the prison outpost. You commandeered a ship. You escaped my pursuit. You interrupted me in the moment of my greatest victory, and you carry a blade that is mine by rights. You have stolen from me that which I am owed by the will of the Force, and the strength of the Dark Side. And now, I will make you pay. Tell me: where did you get this blade?”

Korkie feels the sallow edge of this monster’s entitlement curl over his shoulders, seeking purchase, creeping round his throat with jealous, grasping fingers, and his brow darkens in disgust. His voice is hoarse for the violence wreaked upon his mind, but his reply is no less distinct for its timbre.

“My father gave it to me,” he says.

There is no sound except for the ringing in Korkie’s ears, and the cycling breaths of the Sith. It is a strange sort of calm, for though there is control, and stillness, there is no peace as Vader considers this confession.

“Your father?” he says, his voice level through automated modulation, and disbelief. Korkie makes no reply. Vader examines the hilt in his hand, turning it this way and that, as though reacquainting himself with an old friend. “This blade belonged to Qui-Gon Jinn,” Vader says. “Did you know that?”

“Yes,” Korkie says. He has heard of Qui-Gon, though only in brief, but he will not allow this villain to think him untested and ignorant. “He was my father’s master.”

“He was,” Vader agrees. “For a time.”

He pauses. Waiting. He’s baiting him. Korkie feels his anxiety mount and he rushes to fill the silence of Vader’s smug restraint, eager to deny him the edge that the authority of intimacy has granted him.

“I know he died. I know a Sith killed him. And then my father killed the Sith. I’ve heard the story.”

“Ah,” Vader sighs. “Then you know how he freed Anakin Skywalker from slavery? How he brought him to the Temple on Coruscant, the heart of the Jedi Order? And how before their Council he denied your father, and took Skywalker as his pupil, instead?”

Korkie didn’t know. But he knows his father, and he’s grown up watching The Negotiator. His father _is_ a Jedi. And Vader is a Sith. This slander can’t be true.

“You’re lying,” he says. “My father is a hero. He sat on the Master’s Council. He was a General in the Grand Army. The Jedi would never have forsaken him.” 

“After twelve years of apprenticeship Master Jinn cast him aside. Perhaps, he sensed in Obi-Wan Kenobi some essential deficit. Something lacking in him, even then. Perhaps he had always known it.”

“There is nothing lacking.”

“And how would you know?” questions Vader, his voice low, the rasp of his breath whispering doubts into Korkie’s mind. “He abandoned you. He left your mother alone, left you to be raised by strangers, left her to be hunted by criminals. She died in his arms, slaughtered by the same man who had killed his master, and he let their murderer walk free. And when he left Mandalore for the last time, he came back to _me_.”

“No,” Korkie says. He clamps down on the word, gritting his teeth, holding on to his denial.

“He didn’t wait for you. He didn’t look for you. You were never even a thought in his head.”

“He didn’t know -”

“Oh, Kiorcicek,” Vader hums. “He didn’t care.”

“No,” Korkie insists. “That’s not true. He didn’t know. My mother wouldn’t ask it of him...”

“Wouldn’t ask him to bear the burden of your birth? Wouldn’t have him accept the consequences of his heretical _attachment?_ Obi-Wan Kenobi is master of many faults, but ignorance is not one of them. He is only ever blind by choice. If he didn’t know of you, it was because he didn’t _want_ to.”

Korkie says nothing. He breathes. He thinks. He reaches desperately for the blue, and counts upwards, steadily, until he feels it coming, like a ripple, an inchoate wave bubbling eagerly over his toes. It is cool, and it soothes him.

“I spent many years living in the shadow of Obi-Wan Kenobi. I know him better than he knows himself. And I guarantee, I know him far better than _you._ After all, I was his apprentice. I was his brother. You may be his blood, but I was his Chosen One. He came back to me, every time. Not the Duchess. Not you. And perhaps that was wise. Perhaps, in you, he saw the same weakness that Qui-Gon saw in him. Perhaps he knew you would always be...deficient.”

Korkie raises his head to glare at the Sith, his eyes blazing, his heart burning but not in rage. In him is a righteous fire, a fever that would sear away the swathes of black robes, blister through the folds of heavy leather, melt off the plastoid dome with its insect eyes, incinerate the vocoder, and incremate every black and twisted thing which separates Darth Vader from Anakin Skywalker.

“You know nothing about him,” he says. “My father is a great man. It is you who are blind!”

The fist tightens over the hilt, the leather creaking in protest.

“Your father is a liar, and a hypocrite,” warns Vader. “He was unfit to bear the legacy of his lineage, just as you are unfit to carry this blade.”

Korkie shakes his head. “It is you who are unfit. It is you who are deficient. My father loved you, Anakin. And you failed him.”

The hilt clatters to the floor, tumbling over the metal grating and rolling to a stop just shy of Korkie’s feet. He steps back, unsure if this is a gauntlet thrown or an exclamation of defeat, and frightened by the possibilities of either. He looks back to Vader.

“Pick it up,” the lord intones.

“What?”

“If you would speak for your father - if you would defend Obi-Wan Kenobi with your tongue, then you must prove your convictions with your blade. Or were all your protests only feeble lies, and childish fantasies?” 

Korkie shakes his head. “I stand by every one.”

“Then take up your blade, and show me,” says Vader. “Show me what your father has left you. Show me the legacy of Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

For a moment, he doesn’t move because he knows he’s already lost. He may carry his mother’s strength, and his father’s faith, and Qui-Gon Jinn’s blade, but he is no Jedi. He has never wielded a lightsaber in combat. He has never dueled a trained Force user.

He has only memories of dry desert heat, a hand on his shoulder, or his knee to correct his posture. Children’s laughter drifting out from the maw of a tiny hut. A little garden. The scent of mandrangea beans. The heavy sweetness of a _muja_ fruit. The hum of a plasma blade, the purr of a crystal heart, and the blue of his father’s eyes to guide him.

He cannot win this fight.

But he bends. He picks up the hilt, and ignites the blade. A glory of green leaps forth, eager and biting, the air crackling around it in anticipation. 

Before him, Vader too ignites his saber, spitting carmine.

Korkie drops into an opening stance.

“Form one,” mocks Vader. “I had expected better from the son of the swordmaster. What a shame that his lineage should meet its end so easily.”

He raises his own blade, his proficiency and comfort clear even to Korkie’s untrained eyes, and he knows this fight will be short. The red blade swings high, and in the moment just before serene readiness, Korkie moves.

With a cry that echoes through the tiny chamber, he throws his own blade aside, and leaps towards Vader, bracing his feet within the circle of the Sith’s arms, too close for the arc of his blade. He reaches out, wrapping one arm around Vader’s waist, the other hand clinging to the wrist just above the pommel of the bloody saber. Vader pulls back, but Korkie leans in, pressing his cheek to the chestplate of the villain, and pushing him back, back, back. 

Vader whirls, twisting his arm, trying to dislodge Korkie’s clinging form. They turn, lumbering in a slow circle as though in some savage mockery of a lover’s dance, until Vader throws Korkie off of him, and he hits the metal plating of the door behind him.

He is winded, for a second, for a brief, inconsiderable, inestimable second, and then he realises that the _door_ is _behind_ him.

Vader eyes him from a few feet away. 

“I must admit you have surprised me,” he says. “But then the Mandalorians were always uncivilised brawlers.”

Korkie closes his eyes as Vader stalks closer, putting every ounce of his will into his escape.

_Please, please, please open, please open, please…_

He can hear the predatory thrum of Vader’s saber approach, can feel the prick of plasma charged air, and braces himself, still pleading to the Force. One final upward arc, then -

_Schkk!_

The door hisses open, and Korkie tumbles backward, his legs flying over his head as his body is thrown off balance suddenly deprived of its support. Vader's swing goes wide, and Korkie rolls into the corridor, recovering his haunches, surprised, but not pausing to wonder at his good fortune. With a final burst of effort, bolstered by the confidence of success, he calls to Qui-Gon Jinn’s discarded hilt.

It rushes to his hand, quick as sunlight, and ignites just as swiftly.

Then he’s off. He races down the corridor, taking turns without concern for where he’s going as long as it is away from that cell, that blade, and the Sith who has forgotten everything about his father. Blaster bolts ricochet from his blade, sparking against electric panels, surveillance cams, and plastoid shielded bodies. He turns left, then right, then left again, breaking free into a wider and less populated hallway.

At the threshold, he palms the blast door shut behind him, and blasts the controls, but there is no time to see if his efforts hold. He only hopes that it may obfuscate the direction of his escape, and give him a few extra seconds to think, and consider his options.

There aren’t many.

He sheathes his blade, weighing the merits of what awaits him to his left. Deciding against it, he turns right -

And collides with the solid chest of an armored stormtrooper. He stumbles back, but the trooper, who is accompanied by a partner equally well armored and equipped, grabs his wrist and hauls him close.

“What’s this?” he asks. The voice is familiar, but the grip is far less kind than Boil’s. Like the wrestling _ram’gi_ fish of Mandalore, he writhes where he has been hooked, but cannot break free. “If it isn’t the little Jedi! Wonder who’s up to be decommissioned for letting this one escape?”

There’s a flash of light, and a sharp report, and the trooper drops dead where he stands. Beside him, his partner stands with his blaster still upraised.

Korkie freezes, startled by the easy cruelty of the remaining soldier, and unable to gauge his intent. But then, the helmet is lifted free, and he’s staring at the grim face of Boil, his expression creased with deep lines of concern, displeasure, and to Korkie’s utter relief: long-suffering annoyance.

“Where the hells have you been? I’ve been searching the entire detention block for you!”

“Oh, well,” laughs Korkie. “Was catching up with family. It would have been terribly rude to refuse, after they’d gone to such lengths in their kind display of hospitality. I had a private room, you know!”

“Yeah, and I can take you right back to it,” grumbles Boil, grabbing him by the elbow and frog marching him into a nearby alcove. Seeing him thus deposited, he goes back to haul the dead trooper into their oasis, hiding the body, and divesting him of his uniform. “Strip,” he commands.

Korkie sighs. “Why is it you’re always trying to get a Kenobi naked?” he wonders.

Boil refrains from gracing him with a reply, settling for a much more eloquent eye roll. Korkie grins, but obediently drops his drawers, shimmying out of his tunic to stand patient in his smallclothes as Boil struggles on.

“And to think,” Korkie says, flexing his bare toes as he pulls the blacks over his calves and up his thighs. “It only took the threat of decommission, a duel with a Sith Lord, a tiny bit of murder, and _asking_ _politely_ to see me in my underthings. So simple.”

“ _N'paravu gar lalat, shab'ika,_ ” grouses Boil, sending gauntlets and greaves at the boy’s thick head. “Now, hurry up.”

**Author's Note:**

> Mando'a Translations:
> 
> Day'duumiri ni, gar etyc aruetii!... "Let me go, you dirty traitor!"  
> Boil, ner vod! Nu'duumir ibic!... "Boil, my brother! Don't let them take you!"  
> K’oyacyi, gar nurmanyc adiik... "Stay alive, you crazy kid."  
> N'paravu gar lalat, shab'ika... "I will eat your tongue, you little shit."


End file.
